Suchergebnisse

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.A broad international consensus supports the view that ensuring judicial independence is a normatively appealing goal, either because independence is itself a virtue or because it is believed to set the conditions for many other normatively appealing goals. Academic research on the subject raises questions about what independence is and whether it is a useful concept at all. Scholars question whether independence can be designed, and if so, under what conditions. Assuming that judicial independence can be generated, scholars also question whether it will produce the ends we desire. This diversity of opinion is driven by the fact that judicial independence is a product of potentially complicated political processes. Scholars disagree about how these processes work. Particular theoretical models of the political systems in which judges are embedded have clear implications for all aspects of the research process, from conceptual development to causal inference. Absent theoretical consensus on the way that politics works in particular places, we cannot expect consensus over the nature, construction, and effects of judicial independence. The implication of this view is that reform efforts must be guided as much by the theoretical and normative orientations of designers. What scholars can do is help designers make their theoretical and normative commitments transparent.

A significant majority of the world's constitutional courts publicize their decisions through direct contact with the national media. This interest in public information is puzzling in so far as constitutional judges are not directly accountable to voters. I argue that the promotion of case results is consistent with a theory of judicial behavior in which public support for courts can undermine incentives for insincere decision making. In this article, I develop a simple game theory model that identifies how case promotion is linked to judicial choice. Results of a simultaneous equations model estimating the Mexican Supreme Court's merits decisions and its choices to publicize those decisions by issuing press releases to national media outlets support an account of constitutional review in which judges believe they can influence their authority through case promotion.

Recent theory in judicial politics suggests that a normative public commitment to a state's high court can undermine political constraints on judging induced by the separation-of-powers system. If public support affects judicial authority in this way, judges ought to care about influencing the information to which citizens have access, especially when they substitute their preferences for those of elected officials by invalidating public policies. This study attempts to simultaneously explain the Mexican Supreme Court's merits decisions in constitutional cases and its choices to issue press releases summarizing those decisions for members of the national media. Using original data on the Supreme Court's constitutional resolutions, I find that the Court was significantly more likely to publicize decisions striking down public policies than those upholding them. I also find that that the Court was most likely to publicize resolutions striking down important federal policies, the policies the Court was least likely to invalidate.

AbstractInternational courts have far-from-perfect records of compliance. States routinely delay the implementation of policy changes necessary to come into line with international obligations. Some judicial orders are simply ignored in their entirety. Yet judicial orders aimed at potentially recalcitrant states often vaguely express what is required and thus create conditions for delay and defiance. This article leverages a detailed public monitoring system for decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to evaluate a model of judicial opinion writing that connects the informational challenges associated with effectuating significant policy change to the language that judges adopt in their orders and, ultimately, to the reactions of states. Our results suggest that uncertainty about how precisely to bring about a policy change influences compliance by reducing the clarity of judicial orders. Flexibility in language permits judges to tradeoff maximal pressure for compliance for the ability to leverage local knowledge about how to bring a state in line with its international obligations. From this perspective, noncompliant outcomes are not necessarily a clear signal of weak judicial institutions, but, instead, they are a natural piece of the process by which judges manage difficult policy-making tasks.

Followers of law, politics and business commonly relate stories of individuals who appear to predict an expected performance level below what they believe themselves to be capable of. The standard explanation for such rhetoric is that it hedges against the negative consequences of unanticipated failures and takes advantage of unexpected successes. Although the strategy appears highly attractive, some individuals do provide honest evaluations of their abilities, and some overpromise. We develop a model of strategic communication designed to explain this variation. Underpromising is especially attractive when observers have strong incentives to watch a preliminary performance; however, when high-quality individuals are in large supply and when the costs of performing badly are neither too high nor too low, underpromising can result in individuals being ignored. To ensure that they are not, individuals must give up the opportunity to outperform a promise and risk an underperformance.

Followers of law, politics and business commonly relate stories of individuals who appear to predict an expected performance level below what they believe themselves to be capable of. The standard explanation for such rhetoric is that it hedges against the negative consequences of unanticipated failures and takes advantage of unexpected successes. Although the strategy appears highly attractive, some individuals do provide honest evaluations of their abilities, and some overpromise. We develop a model of strategic communication designed to explain this variation. Underpromising is especially attractive when observers have strong incentives to watch a preliminary performance; however, when high-quality individuals are in large supply and when the costs of performing badly are neither too high nor too low, underpromising can result in individuals being ignored. To ensure that they are not, individuals must give up the opportunity to outperform a promise and risk an underperformance. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

AbstractAlthough scholars have made considerable progress on a number of important research questions by relaxing assumptions commonly used to divide political science into subfields, rigid boundaries remain in some contexts. In this essay, we suggest that the assumption that international politics is characterized by anarchy whereas domestic politics is characterized by hierarchy continues to divide research on the conditions under which governments are constrained by courts, international or domestic. We contend that we will learn more about the process by which courts constrain governments, and do so more quickly, if we relax the assumption and recognize the substantial similarities between domestic and international research on this topic. We review four recent books that highlight contemporary theories of the extent to which domestic and international law binds states, and discuss whether a rigid boundary between international and domestic scholarship can be sustained on either theoretical or empirical grounds.

Scholars have argued that credible commitment institutions have important impacts on political outcomes as diverse as economic growth and social order. If commitment institutions function as theorized, then their effects should vary across individuals, groups, or states, based on their respective vulnerability to promise breaking. Yet existing empirical studies never pursue this implication. The failure to do so risks a number of inferential errors and can lead to suboptimal policy prescriptions for institutional reform. In this article, the authors develop and provide empirical evidence for these claims within the context of a commitment problem that scholars believe undermines social order. Adapted from the source document.

Scholars have argued that credible commitment institutions have important impacts on political outcomes as diverse as economic growth and social order. If commitment institutions function as theorized, then their effects should vary across individuals, groups, or states, based on their respective vulnerability to promise breaking. Yet existing empirical studies never pursue this implication. The failure to do so risks a number of inferential errors and can lead to suboptimal policy prescriptions for institutional reform. In this article, the authors develop and provide empirical evidence for these claims within the context of a commitment problem that scholars believe undermines social order.